You Can Buy Richard Garriott’s Blood For $5000

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Would you like to own a “Lord British Blood Reliquary” containing Richard Garriott’s actual blood? Now is your chance! The Tabula Rasa developer is selling artwork containing his blood for the low-low price of $5000 (around £3852) via eBay alongside a selection of items from his new MMO, Shroud of the Avatar.

The item description says that, “The Lord British Blood Reliquary is a beautiful and unique piece of art made of bakelite, copper, nails, glass, and mirrored glass that can be hung on your wall.” I think I would worry that hanging this up would give Richard Garriott the ability to apparate into my house whenever he felt like it. I’d come downstairs at night and he’d be in my kitchen, fridge door open, drinking milk direct from the carton.

To prove this is real, the blood was drawn from Garriott during a livestream yesterday. “We are literally giving our blood to the playerbase,” he explained to the bemused looking nurse who had come to stick him with a needle. I hope this means that there will be sweat and tears containers for sale soon.

There are only (only!) six reliquaries available, though as yet it doesn’t look like anyone has bid on them. Perhaps that’s because they only ship within the United States.

For the money, you also get a large number of items for the game, at least some of which are already implemented. Plus, “as a limited time bonus” they are “also including a Studio Visit to the Portalarium offices!” Although travel expenses are not included.

Shroud of the Avatar was funded via Kickstarter and is currently available through Steam early access. Steam reviews suggest development is not going well.

46 Comments

Used to like the guy but he’s gone the way of Peter molyneux and hanging on to his past glories and using that to promote his newer and somewhat naff games. I watched a bit of a painful YouTube video where he is promoting Shroud of the Avatar by endlessly going on about how he created the genre etc etc. Times have changed Dick and you’re kidding yourself if you think you can complete with the low budget crud you’re churning out now. Shroud of the Avatar is about 10 years late mate. Lose the ego trip and rejoin the real world.

Ahhh, I remember him blaming us gamers who beta tested his Tabula Rasa game. His ego couldn’t take the criticism, despite the fact that a lot of that criticism was constructive; people wanted the game to succeed.

It’s sort of sad to see that guys who helped create the standards for videogaming seem to have stopped in time.
Recicling their old ideas over and over, without paying attention to a world which has never stopped evolving.

Game worlds haven’t ever reached those heights again, but Ultima VII was no flawless gem, either. The combat was a joke, the Jamesian writing style is cringey, the art doesn’t stand up next to a lot of the 2D games of the era (particularly some of the Nintendo stuff) and it was buggy and unpolished as hell. Also, the quest structure of “walk around and click through reams of dialogue until your next objectives become clear” wasn’t exactly the epitome of game design.

I absolutely love Ultima VII, but its reputation has outgrown reality. It does not hold up in a lot of ways.

I’ve played it for the first time a couple of years ago, so don’t call it rose-tinted glasses when I say it SUPER holds up (outside of combat, which is, of course, beyond busted).
Medieval-style writing may have been silly, sure, but do you remember how incredibly strongly-written that dialogue was? I can’t recall many games where words could get under my skin so effectively. Where upon arriving to a new town I would talk to everyone meticulously because I was actually eager to hear what they had to say. That game’s writer was sick.

As long as people are willing tho waste their money… there will always be someone ready to profit from them. It was obvious since day one that Shroud of the Avatar was a piece of crap. There was not even need to watch the videos or read the description on Kickstarter. But he managed to collect 9mil dollars. Nine millions. You will always find fools ready to waste their money for 100% fail projects. Always.

Guys, guys, guys. Everyone missed the best part. Through the ebay page you can browse his past customer reviews and catch a glimpse of what Richard Garriot’s been buying for himself this last year. The linked sellers’ pages are a menagerie of exactly what you’d expect Lord British to be buying. A glimpse includes crystals, fossils, LARP gear, vintage stove parts, tesla coils, tesla coil parts, Sinclair replica kits, geocaching badges, and old Apple II games.

I will say that I like at least some of my game developers like I like my Rockstars. I’m comforted by characters in the mix. I want my rockstars telling people they’re better than the Beatles and storming off flights just before starting a tour. I want some of my game designers building castles with thrones somewhere in Texas and selling their blood in weird art objects to fund their next game or their next cosmonaut mission. I briefly got to meet Garriot one time and it delivered on every level. He had double braided rat tails. It was awesome.

I wrote the Most Helpful (All Time) negative Steam review, and was heavily involved in feedback for the Alpha from launch to 2 years in when I got disgusted and sold off my pledge… and if you thought the Blood Reliquary was cultish, you aren’t wrong; many of us early backers begged and pleaded for the team to focus upon, or at least outline gameplay that people with the basic game would be able to experience. But because of a warped view of the importance of Whales, as well as an unshakeable belief that they were making a game for a narrow audience and it didn’t need widening out, they just released real cash Add On after Add On instead of actual game content.
Worse, it locked them into a terrible feedback loop whereby the main supportive voices were the ones with tens of thousands of dollars invested, so systems which were either demanded by them but alienated everyone else got priority (Player owned towns which were cash only, starting at $900) and further put game development back, or things which the average player might like were deliberately either fudged or locked off completely so as not to lower the Whale’s sense of being special.
But even the Mega Whales would get outraged by horrendous decisions that came from the limited set of appreciated feedback; I saw two players, one who had spent $20,000 and one who had accounts worth a staggering $60,000 eventually cash out because the actual game just wasn’t any fun, and the community was dying…
The Devs have since admitted they don’t have enough money even now to finish development, so they’ve even gone as far as adding a F2P style Premium currency. It’s also going to become permanent and have a final wipe (but that’s not launch, no no no, don’t think it is!) which will lock in all the premium property at the end of this month. But the only people left are the insanely dedicated, the Lord British fanatics… cultists, basically. And THATS who this blood item is aimed at. Notice it also has in game items that will be unavailable except via this limited edition of 6, $5,000 purchase. But then, this is a game where the only way you’ll ever own a castle is by spending $12,000… This blood will sell, I guarantee it; the people still invested will be waiting to last minute snipe the bid, just like they did with my account when I sold it again. Many of them insanely seem to think they’ll be able to make a profit reselling later… one poster even claimed a million players at launch. They’re completely MAD.

But even 6x $5,000 only buys a day or so of development time; if they’d only made a game everyone actually wanted to play, instead of trying to get more and more blood out of a few Whale Stones, eh…? I once hoped it would be that game. I long ago gave up hope.